Inexplicable Movie Review: The Wizard

The Wizard is a common punching bag for movie reviewers, but really, when the movie dropped in 1989, it was noticeable for two very cool reasons, at least to my five-year-old mind:

1) The Power Glove. The scene with Lukas is rightfully mocked now, but at the time, the Power Glove looked like the coolest effing thing just about ever. According to a pretty trustworthy source, the Angry Video Game Nerd, it is god damn awful to actually play a game with, but hey, it still does look cool.

2) The preview of Super Mario Brothers 3, which was a good and proper sequel to the original game, as opposed to the weird game known as Super Mario Brothers 2 in the states. For some reason, I remember getting SMB3 relatively early in my youth, which was rare because I normally only got bargain-priced games. I somehow managed to avoid getting the ultimate horrible bargain game, Home Alone, at least.

Anyway, looking at the history of video game movies, you'd be hard pressed to say that The Wizard was in the bottom five. Yeah, it was essentially a 90-minute advertisement for Nintendo, but at least it was an enjoyable ad with decent actors like Fred Savage and Christian Slater and Beau Bridges and the girl who would become Rilo Kiley. While none of them are really award winners, they give at least capable performances.

The Wizard is just kind of an average movie to me, especially when compared to other "kids" movies of the time frame - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Honey I Shrunk Every God Damn Thing Ever don't hold up as well either. The Wizard is also not a colossal cluster eff, like most video game movies, excluding Mortal Kombat, which is shocking from its sheer competence. But, that's a discussion for another time, and another review.

(Actually, I might expand on this whole entry at some point... I feel like I'm rushing things a bit, whereas it would be good to REALLY get into all of The Wizard's amazing parts.)